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Nov 28 -Dec 5, 2010 |
Sharp satires on the plight of young employees
Italian movies by Paolo Virzě and Davide Marengo part of European Film Festival in Toronto
By Paola Bernardini
Originally Published: 2009-11-22
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Director Paolo Virzě with Isabella Ragonese and Micaela Ramazzotti.
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Temporary work and unemployed university graduates in Italy – a nation with a legacy of low-paid workers. These are the themes of two Italian films at the fifth edition of the European Film Festival to be held in Toronto from Nov. 19 to Dec. 3. A Whole Life Ahead (Tutta la vita davanti) by Paolo Virzě, and Night Bus (Notturno Bus) by Davide Marengo are among the 26 films from over 23 countries that will be screened at all’Eh!U.
On Saturday there will be a screening of Virzě’s ferocious comedy – “about our happy apocalypse, in which the latest have a jacket, a tie, and cell phone.”
The director from Livorno tells the story of precarious youth who are attending university or have university degrees, who are part of the generation of modern slavery and who fall back on call-centre work: In his latest work, Virzě was inspired by The Organizer (I Compagni) by Mario Monicelli. Even the 1963 film starring Marcello Mastroianni and Annie Girardot – a film on worker rights and a failed strike – was a “demonstration” against a society in which elders rule.
Initially, Monicelli’s film was snubbed by the Festival di Venezia, although it had great success internationally – so much so that the director received awards and accolades throughout the world. Years later, the songs and slogans from The Organizer, including the catchphrases, entered the language of the people and became a representation of the common uneasiness among workers.
We see yesterday’s image “of an intolerable ruin which is the wasting of talent and intelligence of many worthy youth who are forced to flee abroad or submit to the new slavery that is underemployment,” – as director Virzě describes it – again today, as if it were a refrain, in A Whole Life Ahead that talks of a society “that appears set on preserving generational and caste privileges.”
Virtě’s film is about Marta – a cultured, gentle, and introspective girl who has just graduated with honours in philosophy and then finds herself in the workforce jungle. The father had passed away and the mother is confined to bed due to illness so she depends on the daughter’s efforts.Marta starts off as a babysitter as she realizes she’s part of the ranks of the frustrated unemployed. Subsequently urged by her mother to work outside the home, she finds a telephone job at a call centre for a company that markets a modern electrical appliance.
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